| New Democratic Party Nouveau Parti démocratique |
|
|---|---|
Active federal party |
|
| Leader | Nycole Turmel (interim) |
| President | Associate Presidents: Hassan Yussuff (Labour), Brigitte Sanscoucy |
| Founded | August 3, 1961[1] Incorporated CCF and CLC |
| Headquarters | 300 - 279 Laurier Avenue Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5J9 |
| Ideology | Social democracy (Canadian), Democratic socialism |
| Political position | Centre-left |
| International affiliation | Socialist International |
| Official colours | Orange, Green |
| Seats in the House of Commons |
102 / 308
|
| Seats in the Senate |
0 / 105
|
| Website | |
| www.ndp.ca | |
| Politics of Canada Political parties Elections |
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The New Democratic Party (French: Nouveau Parti démocratique), commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada.[2] The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in Manitoba and Nova Scotia currently form the governments in those provinces. Provincial parties have previously formed governments in British Columbia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan, and the territorial party formed the government in Yukon. In the 2011 federal election, the NDP won the second-most seats in the Canadian House of Commons, gaining the title of Official Opposition for the first time in Canadian history.
The NDP evolved from a merger of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The CCF grew from populist, agrarian and democratic socialist roots into a modern social-democratic party. Although the CCF was part of the Christian left and the Social Gospel movement,[3] the NDP is secular and pluralistic. It has broadened to include concerns of the New Left, and advocates issues such as gay rights, international peace, and environmental stewardship.
New Democrats today advocate, among other things:
The NDP has never formed the federal government, but is the Official Opposition in the current 41st Canadian Parliament. It has also at times wielded influence during federal minority governments, such as in the recent 40th Parliament as well as the preceding 39th and (particularly) the 38th Parliaments of 2004-2008. The NDP also enjoyed considerable influence during the earlier minority Liberal governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, due to being a large enough group to decide outcomes when the others are split. Provincial New Democratic Parties, technically sections of the federal party, have governed in half the provinces and a territory. They currently govern the provinces of Manitoba and Nova Scotia, form the Official Opposition in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and have sitting members in every provincial legislature except those of Quebec (where there is no provincial NDP), New Brunswick (although the New Brunswick NDP had an elected member until 2006) and Prince Edward Island. They have previously formed governments in the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, and in the Yukon Territory. The NDP also formed the official opposition in Alberta during the 1980s.
The New Democrats are also active municipally, and have been elected mayors, councillors, and school and service board members — Toronto mayor David Miller was a leading example, although he did not renew his membership in 2007. Similarly, Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson began his political career as the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Fairview. Most municipal office-holders in Canada are usually elected as independents or with autonomous municipal parties.
In 1956, after the birth of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) by a merger of two previous labour congresses, negotiations began between the CLC and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) to bring about an alliance between organized labour and the political left in Canada. In 1958 a joint CCF-CLC committee, the National Committee for the New Party (NCNP), was formed to create a "new" social-democratic political party, with ten members from each group. The NCNP spent the next three years laying down the foundations of the New Party. During this process, a large number of New Party Clubs were established to allow like-minded Canadians to join in its founding, and six representatives from New Party Clubs were added to the National Committee. In 1961, at the end of a five-day long Founding Convention which established its principles, policies and structures, the New Democratic Party was born and Tommy Douglas, the long-time CCF Premier of Saskatchewan, was elected its first leader.[8] In 1960, before the NDP was founded, one candidate, Walter Pitman, won a by-election under the New Party banner.
The influence of organized labour on the party is still reflected in the party's conventions as affiliated trade unions send delegates on a formula based on their number of members. Since approximately one-quarter of the convention delegates have recently been from affiliated labour groups, after the party changed to an Every Member Vote method of electing leaders in leadership races, labour delegate votes are scaled to 25% of the total number of ballots cast for leader.
At the 1971 leadership convention, an activist group called The Waffle tried to take control of the party, but were defeated by David Lewis with the help of trade union members. The following year, most of The Waffle split from the NDP and formed their own party. The NDP itself supported the minority government formed by the Pierre Trudeau-led Liberals from 1972 to 1974, although the two parties never entered into a coalition. Together they succeeded in passing several socially progressive initiatives into law such as pension indexing and the creation of the crown corporation Petro-Canada.[9]
In 1974, the NDP worked with the Progressive Conservatives to pass a motion of non-confidence, forcing an election. However, it backfired as Trudeau's Liberals regained a majority government, mostly at the expense of the NDP, which lost half its seats. Lewis lost his own riding and resigned as leader the following year.
Under the leadership of Ed Broadbent (1975–1989), the NDP played a critical role during Joe Clark's minority government of 1979-1980, moving the non-confidence motion on John Crosbie's budget that brought down the Progressive Conservative (PC) government, and forced the election that brought Trudeau's Liberal Party back to power.
In the 1984 election, which saw the Progressive Conservatives win the most seats in Canadian history, the NDP won 30 seats, only one behind the 31 it won in 1972. The governing Liberals were decimated, falling to 40 seats in what was at the time the worst defeat of a sitting government at the federal level. The NDP fared far better than expected, considering the PC party had won the biggest majority government in Canadian history. Third parties historically do not do well in landslide election contests. More importantly, they were only 10 seats behind the Liberals — the closest the party and its predecessors had ever got (up to that point) to one of the two major parties, and the best performance for a third party in almost 60 years. This led to some talk that Canada was headed for a UK-style Tory-versus-Labour division, with the NDP pushing the Liberals into oblivion. Afterwards, Broadbent himself consistently out-polled Liberal leader John Turner and even Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
On 20 July 1987, the NDP swept three by-elections in Newfoundland, Ontario, and the Yukon, picking up two formerly PC seats and holding one NDP seat. These by-elections brought Audrey McLaughlin to the House of Commons as the MP for Yukon.[10]
The NDP saw a new record of 43 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the house in the election of 1988. The Liberals, however, had reaped most of the benefits of opposing free trade to emerge as the dominant alternative to the ruling government. The PCs' barrage of attacks on the Liberals, as well as vote-splitting between the NDP and Liberals, helped them win a second consecutive majority. In 1989, Broadbent stepped down after 14 years as federal leader of the NDP.[11]
At the party's leadership convention, former B.C. Premier Dave Barrett and Audrey McLaughlin were the main contenders for the leadership. During the campaign, Barrett argued that the party should be concerned with western alienation, rather than focusing its attention on Quebec. The Quebec wing of the NDP strongly opposed Barrett's candidacy, with Phil Edmonston, the party's main spokesman in Quebec, threatening to resign from the party if Barrett won.[12] Barrett's campaign was also hurt when his back-room negotiations with leadership rival Simon De Jong were inadvertently recorded by the latter's CBC microphone. In these discussions, De Jong apparently agreed to support Barrett in exchange for being named House Leader, but he changed his mind at the last minute and supported McLaughlin instead, announcing his endorsement of her before the vote. In the course of his discussion with Barrett, De Jong explained "It's a head and heart thing," i.e., that his head told him to go with Dave while his heart told him to go with Audrey. McLaughlin won the leadership on the fourth ballot, becoming the first woman in Canada to lead a political party.
Although enjoying strong support among organized labour and rural voters in the Prairies, McLaughlin tried to expand their support into Quebec without much success. In 1989, the New Democratic Party of Quebec adopted a sovereigntist platform and severed its ties with the federal NDP. Under McLaughlin, the party did manage to win an election in Quebec for the first time when Edmonston won a 1990 by-election. The party had briefly picked up its first Quebec MP in 1986, when Robert Toupin crossed the floor from the Tories after briefly sitting as an independent. However, he left the party in October 1987 after claiming that communists had infiltrated the party.
The NDP chose to align itself with the Progressive Conservatives and Liberals on the "yes" side of the Charlottetown Accord referendum in 1992. Barrett reluctantly endorsed it to comply with party policy (he opposed the Meech Lake Accord in 1987), but later referred to the NDP's support for the Accord as a mistake. Edmonston, a Quebec nationalist, frequently clashed with his own party over this position on Canadian federalism, and did not run for re-election.
The NDP was routed in the 1993 election. It won only nine seats, three seats short of official party status in the House of Commons. Several factors contributed to this dramatic collapse just one election after winning a record number of seats and after being first in opinion polling at one point during the previous Parliament. One was the massive unpopularity of NDP provincial governments under Bob Rae in Ontario and Mike Harcourt in British Columbia. Not coincidentally, the NDP was routed in these provinces; it lost all 10 of its Ontario MPs and 17 of its 19 British Columbia MPs – more than half of its caucus. The Ontario NDP would be soundly defeated in 1995, while the British Columbia NDP recovered and won reelection in 1996.
The NDP was also indirectly hampered by the collapse of the Progressive Conservatives, who were cut down to only two seats. Exit polls showed that 17% to 27% of NDP supporters from 1988 voted Liberal in 1993. It was obvious by the beginning of October that Liberal leader Jean Chrétien would be the next Prime Minister. However, the memory of 1988's vote splitting combined with the tremendous antipathy toward the PCs caused NDP supporters to vote Liberal to ensure the Progressive Conservatives would be defeated. Many voters in the NDP's traditional Western heartland also switched to the right-wing Reform Party of Canada. Despite sharp ideological differences, Reform's populism struck a chord with many western NDP supporters. In Ontario, fear of the Reform Party and anger at Rae helped cause NDP supporters to vote Liberal. Barrett's warnings about Western alienation proved to be prophetic, as the rise of the Reform Party replaced the NDP as the protest voice west of Ontario.
McLaughlin resigned in 1995 and was succeeded by Alexa McDonough, the former leader of the Nova Scotia NDP. In contrast to traditional but diminishing Canadian practice, where an MP for a safe seat stands down to allow a newly elected leader a chance to enter Parliament via a by-election, McDonough opted to wait until the next election to enter Parliament.
The party recovered somewhat in the 1997 election, electing 21 members. The NDP made a breakthrough in Atlantic Canada, a region where they had been practically nonexistent at the federal level. Before 1997, they had won only three seats in the Atlantic in their entire history. However, in 1997 they won eight seats in that region, in the process unseating Liberal ministers David Dingwall and Doug Young. The party was able to harness the discontent of Maritime voters, who were upset over cuts to employment insurance and other social programs.
Afterwards, McDonough was widely perceived as trying to move the party toward the centre of the political spectrum, in the Third Way mould of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Union leaders were lukewarm in their support, often threatening to break away from the NDP, while Canadian Auto Workers head Buzz Hargrove called for her resignation. MPs Rick Laliberté and Angela Vautour crossed the floor to other parties during this term, to the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives respectively, reducing the NDP caucus to 19 seats.
In the November 2000 election, the NDP campaigned on the issue of Medicare but lost significant support. The governing Liberals ran an effective campaign on their economic record and managed to recapture some of the Atlantic ridings lost to the NDP in the 1997 election. The initial high electoral prospects of the Canadian Alliance under new leader Stockwell Day also hurt the NDP as many supporters strategically voted Liberal to keep the Alliance from winning. The NDP finished with 13 MPs — just barely over the threshold for official party status.
The party embarked on a renewal process starting in 2000. A general convention in Winnipeg in November 2001 made significant alterations to party structures, and reaffirmed its commitment to the left. In the May 2002 by-elections, Brian Masse won the riding of Windsor West, Ontario, previously held for decades by a Liberal, former Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray.
McDonough announced her resignation as party leader for family reasons in June 2002, and was succeeded by Jack Layton. A Toronto city councillor and recent President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Layton was elected at the party's leadership election in Toronto on January 5, 2003, defeating his nearest rival, longtime Winnipeg-area MP Bill Blaikie, on the first ballot with 53.5% of the vote.[13]
Layton had run unsuccessfully for the Commons three times in Toronto-area ridings. Like McDonough before him, Layton did not contest a seat in Parliament until the 2004 election. In the interim, he appointed Blaikie as deputy leader and made him parliamentary leader of the NDP.
The 2004 election produced mixed results for the NDP. It increased its total vote by more than a million votes; however, despite Layton's optimistic predictions of reaching 40 seats, the NDP only gained five seats in the election, for a total of 19. The party was disappointed to see its two Saskatchewan incumbents defeated in close races[14] by the new Conservative Party (created by merger of the Alliance and PC parties), perhaps due to the unpopularity of the NDP provincial government. Those losses caused the federal NDP to be shut out in Saskatchewan for the first time since the 1965 election, despite obtaining 23% of the vote in the province.
Exit polls indicated that many NDP supporters voted Liberal to keep the new Conservative Party of Canada from winning. The Liberals had recruited several prominent NDP members, most notably former British Columbia Premier Ujjal Dosanjh, to run as Liberals as part of a drive to convince NDP voters that a reunited Conservative Party could sneak up the middle in the event of a split in the centre-left vote.
The NDP campaign also experienced controversy after Layton suggested the removal of the Clarity Act, considered by some to be vital to keeping Quebec in Canada and by others as undemocratic, and promised to recognize any declaration of independence by Quebec after a referendum. Although this position was consistent with NDP policy, some high-profile party members, such as NDP House Leader Bill Blaikie, publicly indicated that they did not share this view. (Layton would later reverse his position and support the Act in 2006.)
The Liberals were re-elected, though this time as a minority government. Combined, the Liberals and NDP had 154 seats – one short of the total needed for the balance of power. As has been the case with Liberal minorities in the past, the NDP were in a position to make gains on the party's priorities, such as fighting health care privatization, fulfilling Canada's obligation to the Kyoto Protocol, and electoral reform.
The party used Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin's politically precarious position caused by the sponsorship scandal to force investment in multiple federal programs, agreeing not to help topple the government provided that some major concessions in the federal budget were ceded to. The governing Liberals agreed to support the changes in exchange for NDP support on confidence votes. On 19 May 2005, by Speaker Peter Milliken's tie-breaking vote, the House of Commons voted for second reading on major NDP amendments to the federal budget, preempting about $4.5 billion in corporate tax cuts and funding social, educational and environmental programs instead.[15] Both NDP supporters and Conservative opponents of the measures branded it Canada's first "NDP budget". In late June, the amendments passed final reading and many political pundits concluded that the NDP had gained credibility and clout on the national scene.
On 9 November 2005, after the findings of the Gomery Inquiry were released, Layton notified the Liberal government that continued NDP support would require a ban on private healthcare. When the Liberals refused, Layton announced that he would introduce a motion on 24 November that would ask Martin to call a federal election in February to allow for several pieces of legislation to be passed. The Liberals turned down this offer. On 28 November 2005, Conservative leader Stephen Harper's motion of no confidence was seconded by Layton and it was passed by all three opposition parties, forcing an election. Columnist Andrew Coyne has suggested that the NDP was unlikely to receive much credit for continuing to further prop up the Liberals, so they ended their support for the Martin government.
During the election, the NDP focused their attacks on the Liberal party, in order to counter Liberal appeals for strategic voting. A key point in the campaign was when Judy Wasylycia-Leis had asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to launch a criminal investigation into the leaking of the income trust announcement.[16] The criminal probe seriously damaged the Liberal campaign and prevented them from making their key policy announcements, as well as bringing Liberal corruption back into the spotlight. After the election, the RCMP announced the conclusion of the income trust investigation and laid a charge of 'Breach of Trust' against Serge Nadeau, an official in the Department of Finance,[17] while Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale was cleared of wrongdoing.[18]
The NDP campaign strategy put them at odds with Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), which had supported an NDP-backed Liberal minority government and which was only backing NDP candidates that had a chance of winning. After the campaign, the Ontario NDP expelled CAW leader Buzz Hargrove from the party (which has a common membership both federally and provincially, see below) for his support of the Liberals.
On 23 January, the NDP won 29 seats, a significant increase of 10 seats from the 19 won in 2004. It was the fourth-best performance in party history, approaching the level of popular support enjoyed in the 1980s. The NDP kept all of the 18 seats it held at the dissolution of Parliament (Paul Dewar retained the riding of Ottawa Centre vacated by Broadbent). Bev Desjarlais, an NDP MP since 1997, unsuccessfully ran as an independent in her Churchill riding after losing the NDP nomination. While the party gained no seats in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, or the Prairie Provinces, it gained five seats in British Columbia, five more in Ontario and the Western Arctic riding of the Northwest Territories.
The Conservatives won a minority government in the 2006 election, and initially the NDP was the only party that would not be able to pass legislation with the Conservatives. However, following a series of floor crossings, the NDP also came to hold the balance of power.
The NDP voted against the government in all four confidence votes in the 39th parliament, the only party to do so. These were votes on the United States-Canada softwood lumber dispute, extending the mission to Afghanistan, the 2006 Canadian federal budget and 2007 federal budget. However, it worked with the Conservatives on other issues. After forcing the Conservatives to agree to certain revisions, the NDP helped pass the Accountability Act. After the NDP fiercely criticized the initial Conservative attempt at a Clean Air Act, the Conservatives agreed to work with the NDP and other parties to revise the legislation.[19] The NDP also supported the government in introducing regulations on income trusts, fearing that trends toward mass trust conversions by large corporations to avoid Canadian income taxes would cause the loss of billions of dollars in budget revenue to support health care, pensions and other federal programs. At the same time, the NDP was also wary of the threat of investor losses from income trusts' exaggerated performance expectations.
Since that election, the NDP caucus rose to 30 members following the victory of NDP candidate Thomas Mulcair in a by-election in Outremont. This marked the second time ever (and first time in seventeen years) that the NDP won a riding in Quebec. The party won 37 seats in the 2008 federal election, the best performance since the 1988 federal election total of 43.
In the 2011 federal election the NDP won a record 103 seats, becoming the Official Opposition for the first time in the party's history.
The party had a historic breakthrough in Quebec, where they won 59 out of 75 seats. This meant that a majority of the party's MPs now came from a province where they had previously only ever elected two candidates in the party's history (Thomas Mulcair and Phil Edmonston, and not concurrently) and had not been fully organized since 1990 (see below). The NDP's success in Quebec was mirrored by the collapse of the Bloc Québécois, which lost all but 4 of its 47 seats.
Jack Layton's performance on the French-language talk show Tout le monde en parle on April 3 was credited for improving his party's standing among francophone voters; it is the most widely-watched TV show in Quebec.[20] He was also perceived to have performed well in the televised French-language party leaders' debate on April 13.
The NDP held or won seats in every province but Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island, and also held the Western Arctic riding coextensive with the Northwest Territories. It got more than the 10% threshold required for reimbursement of campaign expenses in all but two ridings in the country, an unprecedented result for it.
In July 2011, Layton announced that he was suffering from a new cancer and would take a leave of absence, initially projected to last until the resumption of Parliament in September. He would retain his position of NDP Leader and Leader of the Opposition. The party confirmed his suggestion of Hull—Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel to carry out the functions of party leader in his absence. Layton died from his cancer on August 22, 2011. In his final letter, Layton called for a leadership election to be held in early 2012 to choose his successor,[21] it has been scheduled for March 24, 2012.
Unlike most other Canadian parties, the NDP is integrated with its provincial and territorial parties. Membership lists are maintained by the provinces and territories. Being a member of a provincial or territorial section of the NDP includes automatic membership in the federal party. This precludes a person from supporting different parties at the federal and provincial levels. A key example of this was Buzz Hargrove's expulsion by the Ontario New Democratic Party after he backed Liberal leader Paul Martin in the 2006 federal election.
There are three exceptions. In Nunavut and in the Northwest Territories, whose territorial legislatures have non-partisan consensus governments, the federal NDP is promoted by its riding associations, since each territory is composed of only one federal riding.
In Quebec, the New Democratic Party of Quebec and the federal NDP agreed in 1989 to sever their structural ties after the Quebec party adopted the sovereigntist platform. Since then, the federal NDP is not integrated with a provincial party in that province; instead, it has a section, the Nouveau Parti démocratique-Section Québec/New Democratic Party Quebec Section,[22] whose activities in the province are limited to the federal level, whereas on the provincial level its members are individually free to support or adhere to any party.
| Party | Seats/Total | Leader |
|---|---|---|
| Alberta New Democratic Party | 2/83 | Brian Mason, MLA |
| British Columbia New Democratic Party | 35/85 | Adrian Dix, MLA, Leader of the Opposition |
| New Democratic Party of Manitoba | 37/57 | Hon. Greg Selinger, MLA, Premier of Manitoba |
| New Brunswick New Democratic Party | 0/55 | Dominic Cardy |
| New Democratic Party of Newfoundland and Labrador |
5/48 | Lorraine Michael, MHA |
| Nova Scotia New Democratic Party | 32/52 | Hon. Darrell Dexter, MLA, Premier of Nova Scotia |
| Ontario New Democratic Party | 17/107 | Andrea Horwath, MPP |
| New Democratic Party of Prince Edward Island | 0/27 | James Rodd[23] |
| Saskatchewan New Democratic Party | 9/58 | John Nilson, MLA (acting) |
| Yukon New Democratic Party | 6/19 | Elizabeth Hanson, MLA, Leader of the Opposition |
(Those current NDP government are in bold)
From 1963 to 1994, there was a New Democratic Party of Quebec.
| Province/Territory | Seats - Status | Election years and party leaders at the time |
|---|---|---|
| Alberta | 16 - Official Opposition | 1986, 1989, Ray Martin |
| British Columbia | 51 - Government | 1991, Michael Harcourt (Premier 1991-1996) |
| Manitoba | 37 - Government | 2011, Greg Selinger (Premier since 2009) |
| New Brunswick | 2 | New Brunswick 1984 by-election, George Little |
| Newfoundland and Labrador |
5 | 2011, Lorraine Michael |
| Nova Scotia | 31 - Government | 2009, Darrell Dexter |
| Ontario | 74 - Government | 1990, Bob Rae (Premier from 1990-1995) |
| Prince Edward Island | 1 | 1996, Herb Dickieson |
| Quebec | 1 | 1944, (CCF, David Côté) |
| Saskatchewan | 55 - Government | 1991, Roy Romanow (Premier from 1991-2001) |
| Yukon | 11 - Government | 1996, Piers McDonald (Premier 1996-2000) |
The most successful provincial section of the party has been the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party, which first came to power in 1944 as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation under Tommy Douglas and has won most of the province's elections since then. In Canada, Tommy Douglas is often cited as the Father of Medicare since, as Saskatchewan Premier, he introduced Canada's first publicly funded, universal healthcare system to the province. Despite the continued success of the Saskatchewan branch of the party, the NDP was shut out of Saskatchewan in the 2004 federal election for the first time since the 1965 election, a result which was repeated in 2006, 2008 and 2011. The New Democratic Party has also formed government in Manitoba, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario and in Yukon.
The 2011 federal election gave the NDP 103 seats.
Only two NDP incumbents who ran for re-election were defeated: Jim Maloway in Elmwood—Transcona (MB), and Tony Martin in Sault Ste. Marie (ON). Bill Siksay in Burnaby—Douglas (BC) chose not to run again, but Kennedy Stewart retained the seat for the NDP.
For a list of NDP MPs and their critic portfolios, see New Democratic Party Shadow Cabinet.
| # | Picture | Leader | Started | Ended | Birth | Death | Ridings while leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thomas Clement "Tommy" Douglas | August 3, 1961 | April 24, 1971 | October 20, 1904 | February 24, 1986 | Burnaby—Coquitlam, Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands, BC | |
| 2 | David Lewis | April 24, 1971 | July 7, 1975 | June 23, 1909 | May 23, 1981 | York South, ON | |
| 3 | John Edward "Ed" Broadbent | July 7, 1975 | December 5, 1989 | March 21, 1936 | - | Oshawa—Whitby, Oshawa, ON | |
| 4 | Audrey Marlene McLaughlin | December 5, 1989 | October 14, 1995 | November 7, 1936 | - | Yukon, YK | |
| 5 | Alexa Ann McDonough | October 14, 1995 | January 25, 2003 | August 11, 1944 | - | Halifax, NS | |
| 6 | John Gilbert "Jack" Layton | January 25, 2003 | August 22, 2011 (leave of absence from July 28, 2011) | July 18, 1950 | August 22, 2011 | Toronto—Danforth, ON | |
| interim | Nycole Turmel | July 28, 2011 | incumbent | September 1, 1942 | - | Hull—Aylmer, QC |
Highest values are bolded
| Election | Leader | # of candidates | # of seats won | # of total votes | % of popular vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | Tommy Douglas | 217 | 19 | 1,044,754 | 13.57% |
| 1963 | Tommy Douglas | 232 | 17 | 1,044,701 | 13.24% |
| 1965 | Tommy Douglas | 255 | 21 | 1,381,658 | 17.91% |
| 1968 | Tommy Douglas | 263 | 22 | 1,378,263 | 16.96% |
| 1972 | David Lewis | 252 | 31 | 1,725,719 | 17.83% |
| 1974 | David Lewis | 262 | 16 | 1,467,748 | 15.44% |
| 1979 | Ed Broadbent | 282 | 26 | 2,048,988 | 17.88% |
| 1980 | Ed Broadbent | 280 | 32 | 2,150,368 | 19.67% |
| 1984 | Ed Broadbent | 282 | 30 | 2,359,915 | 18.81% |
| 1988 | Ed Broadbent | 295 | 43 | 2,685,263 | 20.38% |
| 1993 | Audrey McLaughlin | 294 | 9 | 933,688 | 6.88% |
| 1997 | Alexa McDonough | 301 | 21 | 1,434,509 | 11.05% |
| 2000 | Alexa McDonough | 298 | 13 | 1,093,748 | 8.51% |
| 2004 | Jack Layton | 308 | 19 | 2,116,536 | 15.68% |
| 2006 | Jack Layton | 308 | 29 | 2,589,597 | 17.48% |
| 2008 | Jack Layton | 308 | 37 | 2,517,075 | 18.13% |
| 2011 | Jack Layton | 308 | 103 | 4,508,474 | 30.63% |
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